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Sebastien Jean Born on March 17, 1980 in Thomassin (Haïti), Jean Sébastien lives and works in
Haïti.
In 2000, a visit to the exhibition of the artist Barbara Prézeau Stephenson gives
birth to a new asthetic step in Sébastien’s work (…) « My work is inspired by crafts,
particularly in the choice of the medium, sawdust, coffee grounds, sand.
2006 is an outstanding year ; his studio is destroyed by fire. Sébastien rescues
from the fire what he is can, works it again, transfigures it and shows it at the Art
Center of Jacmel. Then, with the support and the help of Mario Benjamin he shows
his work at the French Institute of Port au Prince. The exhibition is a real success,
his paintings where the black of the smoke mingles with colours are questionning
and he gains the attention and the support of the Monnin Gallery in Petionville.
In November 2010 he takes part in the exhibition « Caribbean Vibrations » at the
Montparnasse Museum, then, some weeks later he is invited by the Egregore
Gallery in Marmande where he shows his paintings and sculptures.
From then on, his work becomes international. In April 2011, he takes part in a
collective exhibition « Haïti Realm of this world », a tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat
and Edouard Glissant, showed in Paris by the Agnès b Foundation , then at the
54th Biennial event of Venice and finally in Miami. He also was in artistic residence
at the Vieux Château.

As if to sound out two words

Alexande Cadet-Petit

As if he wanted to sound out two words, horror and disgust dear to his island, at
first sight, Sébastien Jean gets involved in the singular bestiary of Haïti. That’s not
new in itself. But what is striking nevertheless is that the painter opens up at the
same time the inner side and the outer side of his figurative pieces. Indeed, if he is
still attached to the shape, yet, he characterizes his bestiary a bit more, since,
according to me, it is better to be attached to the inner part, enabling the autopsy, or
better the semiology spreading the spontaneous signs of the thousand-year-old
cultures that are part of all the Caribbean Islands.

In fact, when you look carefully at the lines which sustain the outer side, you can
guess a flying-buttress here, a fasciculated column elsewhere, sometimes a
diagonal in the middle of an archway of the outlying vocabulary of Sébastien Jean
whereas such a move has just been made out we are taken back once more to the
new world he means, since, if the apparently gothic I have just mentioned are part
of the inner, they sudddenly bump into the spine of the container, a monster as
fiercely full of obstacles as today’s societies could be.

Yet, despite the harshness of the association of the black and white, the bestiary
remains soothed. One more time the phantasmagorical world of Sébastien Jean
are derived from the thousand-year-old chats of tales, in which fear triggers off the
promises of union, in the contemporary space of tyrannized cultures.

Alexandre Cadet-Petit, March 12, 2012, in Le Moule, FWI

Sébatien JEAN’s chimeras.

Scarlett JESUS

Sébatien JEAN’s chimeras. Scarlett JESUS « At moonlight, near the sea, in isolated
places in the countryside, immerged in bitter reflections, you can see eveything
take on yellow, imprecise, fantastic shapes.

Sébastien Jean. Untitled, 2011. Soot, tar oil, oil painting, powder.

Painter and sculptor, Sébastien JEAN is a young bolt Haïtian artist who cultivates
his chimeras. Without seeking to please at any rate. Enthusiast of disturbing
contemporary art, he made the choice of showing reality as he perceives it, as a
visionary. Besides, he mischievously calls himself a « lunatic » to define his work
that he wants to be completely free.

The work the artist did when he was in a three-month residence in LARTOCARPE
in Le Moule(GUADELOUPE) is a confirmation of what he says and which is far
from being naïve. Although he is a self-taught artist, Sébastien JEAN started
painting in his early childhood and he could, on many occasions, confront his art
with internationally known artists, in exhibitions from Miami to Paris through
Marmand and lately, at the biennial of Venice.

Talking of « chimeras » to call Sébastien JEAN’s work is being completely aware of
the different meanings and the ambiguity of that word. Moreover in Haïti , where the
word has particular connotations, since « the chimeras » recall a very special social
reality, that of armed gangs serving President ARISTIDE and terryfying the
population between 2001 and 2005.
A Chimera meant, in Greek mythology, a monster spitting out fire ; its body was
made of elements from different animals. That word can easily apply to the hybrid
beings that haunt the artist’s world. Turning his back on a rational approach of
reality, Sébastien JEAN, discloses an imaginative world which is, like most of
Haïtians artists’work, steeped in voodoo beliefs inherited from Africa. The work of
that artist shows us his apprehension of a world he perceives as being strange,
weird, subjected to all kinds of evil spells, magic spells and metamorphosis. What
looks uncommon can be due only to the action of invisible forces : evil spirits, errant
souls, monsters or dragons.
Some titles of GOYA’s work -you inevitably think of- in the Fancies « The Sleep of
Reason Produces Monsters » or « Witches’ Sabbah » could easily apply to the dark
world of his paintings.
The beings, sometimes with claws, with hooked beaks or threatening teeths,
sometimes like ghosts, look as if they were coming out from a Chaos that the
painter darkens furthermore, in a symbolic way, with dusts and ashes. The artist’s
style is clearly recognizable by that chiaroscuro aesthetics, by the choice of a dark
palette most of the time, or by the association of black with a violent colour like
fluorescent red or yellow and also by the erratic and fleeting interlace left by the
brush.

Don’t those lines express the quest of an artist seeking to fix the visions inspired by
an unstable world subjected to the action of supernatural forces ? An unsteady
world as if split up, like some of his diptychs or triptychs. An unrestrained world that
is only governed by the fancies and the fantastic convulsive movements of an
unrestrained imagination.

In the same way, the sculptures - which are like installations – let fate play a large
part. Using salvaged materials, they show the wastes of a society and a time. Old
batteries, rusty wheels and old irons, floated wood, shoes and ropes washed up on
the shore are linked with goat skulls and bones. As if by magic, the artist gives
those waste a new shape and a new lease of life. But those impure beings shaped
from Chaos, will also appear like weird and disturbing monsters. Like Titans or
Ogres, they look as if they wanted to show the remains of their unlucky victims.

Maëlle Galerie

Nevertheless, all those characters, though ugly and terrifying at first sight, look
quite funny. They remind us the monsters in the tales that delighted our childhood.
Like tales, thanks to a biased approach, they enable us to face appalling reality.
The one we live and above all the one Haïtian people live. At the same time and
while confusing horror and laughter, Sébastien JEAN surreptitiously manages to do
a kind of exorcism, his grotesque « chimeras » enabling him to externalize his own
evil spirit, fears and obsessions. To free and -free himself from – the monster that is
in each of us.
Thus, beyond the reference to voodoo and the use of fantastic, Sébastien JEAN
manages to create a very personal world, that is dreamlike and satirical at the same
time. His work revives the sacred function art initially had, that of having secrete
powers. That art, which offers little rational interpretation, acts like a magical
spell.The choice of large formats contributes to emphasize the shock of the
observer.

With a position similar to André Breton’s, Sébastien JEAN joins the contemporary
reasoning of another artist, the Austrian Alfred KUBIN. The twilight atmosphere of
the paintings of both painters shows a world which, plagued by violence, is
dehumanizing itself and going back to animality and savageness. Both ask the
same essential question : can art act on the tragical course of events ? Or should
we consider that its function is to propose « chimeras », « the last ressources of the
unhappy » to take up Rousseau’s expression.

Olivia Breleur, Maëlle Galerie director

After obtaining a DNAP (National Diploma in Visual Arts) and a DNSEP in fine arts
(Superior National Diploma of Plastic Expression), Olivia Breleur decides to leave
the practical side and deepen the theoretical knowledge. Sensitive to the fate of the
artists she encounters, and the lack of professionals around them, she studied in
Paris at the EAC, school of communication, culture and luxury, where she was
awarded a master in art market.

Always passionate by the production of contemporary Caribbean artists, she was
surrounded by professionals for the writing of her research project. Giovanni
Joppolo, specialist in contemporary art of the Caribbean was her director and
Jacques Leenhardt, Director of Studies at the EHESS (School of Superior Studies
in Social Sciences) and specialist in Latin American art, was her godfather.

The eligibility criteria for an international art market. What Place for the market of
artists from Martinique and Guadeloupe? This was the title of her research project
which provocatively announces the analysis and highlights of the barriers to the
radiance of the evoked artists.
She worked between 2010 and 2012 at the Frank Elbaz art gallery in the Marais in
Paris and Drawing Now, a famous Contemporary Drawing Fair that takes place in
the Carreau du Temple in Paris.
In October 2012, at the age of 26, she founded and now runs the Maëlle Galerie
which is installed since March 2014 in the district of Belleville in the 20th
arrondissement of Paris